Somewhere, off in the distance, the faint sound of a brass band seems to be closing in.
Oh, when the Saints …
Chicago, are you ready for this?
Oh, when the Saints …
Mentally prepared for this next Bears test, Sunday afternoon at home against a 1-5 New Orleans team that is en route as a 5-point underdog?
Oh, when the Saints come marching in …
This feels set up for added momentum, doesn’t it? For the Bears’ first four-game winning streak since 2018 and only their third since 2012.
Oh, Lord, I want to be in that number …
But will this time really be different? Can it be?
When the Saints come marching in …
Hold up. Stop the trumpets, trombones and saxophones for a minute. Realize the Saints have come marching into Soldier Field on four consecutive visits to Chicago and left with a victory.
Overall, New Orleans has won eight in a row in this series.
The Bears’ last victory over the Saints came way back in December 2008.
That was a month before Barack Obama’s first term as president began. That was five Bears head coaches ago.
Kyle Orton was the starting quarterback that day, slinging passes to Greg Olsen and Brandon Lloyd in an overtime game that ended with Robbie Gould’s 35-yard field goal.
Peyton Manning was that season’s league MVP. And for those having trouble remembering his acceptance speech at the NFL Honors show, it’s because there wasn’t an NFL Honors spectacle. That didn’t begin until four years later.
Again, we’re talking about December 2008. Waaaay, waaaay back.
That’s the last time the Bears defeated the Saints, getting an 83-yard return touchdown from Danieal Manning on the opening kickoff, then using score-tying and game-ending field goals from Gould to emerge victorious.
This season’s starting quarterback, Caleb Williams, likely wasn’t watching that game. He was only 7, a kindergartener in Washington, D.C.
Current coach Ben Johnson, meanwhile, was employed at eTeleNext in Durham, N.C., just a recent college graduate charting a course in the world of software development.
Tracy Porter was a Saints rookie. Ryan Pace was New Orleans’ director of pro scouting.
“Marley & Me” was hot at the box office. But to peruse showtimes, the newspaper or a desktop internet browser was likely needed. The first iPhone had barely been released a year prior.
In other words, this particular and very peculiar Bears drought has been pronounced. Every time it has seemed like a game with the Saints might serve as a springboard, it has turned out to be a trapdoor instead. And man, have the eight consecutive losses to New Orleans carried a significant sting.
The beating Jay Cutler and the Bears took from the Saints in December 2014 was soon followed by an organizational house cleaning. (Brian Kersey / Getty Images)
Remember the 2014 disaster, the Bears’ ninth loss in a 5-11 season, a 31-15 walloping at Soldier Field that left Pace, then just a young New Orleans executive, stunned by the level of dysfunction he could detect on the Bears’ sideline?
The Bears didn’t score until the fourth quarter that night, after they were already behind 24-0. Drew Brees threw three touchdown passes. Jay Cutler threw three interceptions. Because of course.
That defeat came exactly two weeks before franchise matriarch Virginia McCaskey became so pissed off that she signed off on the decision for her son, George, and then-team president Ted Phillips to fire general manager Phil Emery and coach Marc Trestman in one fell swoop. After three and two seasons.
Pace replaced Emery the next month. Yet somehow, in four tries against his former organization — and with two head coaches — he couldn’t remove the New Orleans spell either.
In 2017, a trip to the Superdome ended with dejection and disbelief, with an incredible 25-yard Zach Miller touchdown catch overturned on replay review by then-senior vice president of officiating Al Riveron, who found frame-by-frame evidence the football moved as Miller hit the ground in the end zone. Because, ya know, gravity … (For the record, Riveron was in the minority with his assessment of the play.)
Yet after a 20-12 Bears loss, that controversial call was quickly overshadowed by Miller’s terrifying injury, a dislocated knee plus a torn popliteal artery that kept the veteran tight end hospitalized in New Orleans for more than a week.
In 2019? Well, that might have been the saddest in this sorrowful string against the Saints, a 36-25 clunker by Lake Michigan that wasn’t anywhere nearly as close as the final score indicated. The Bears were coming off their bye week, with Mitch Trubisky back in the lineup after missing the team’s previous game in London. Yet, even with the Saints missing Brees and top running back Alvin Kamara, the Bears were all too easily upended. By Teddy Bridgewater and Latavius Murray.
That was the day it became obvious that not only was Trubisky struggling, but also he was struggling with his struggles, clearly in a confidence tailspin he couldn’t pull out of. On the Bears’ first drive, Trubisky had an easy third-and-5 completion to Taylor Gabriel teed up on the left side of the field. But he whiffed. Badly.
“That was one of my favorite third downs all week,” Trubisky confessed afterward. “Ripped it all week in practice, and it just didn’t translate to the game. I don’t know why.”
Perhaps no loss better typifies the disappointment of that 2019 Bears season than that one, with Trubisky erratic all afternoon, with his coach, Matt Nagy, agitated by all the sloppiness and with a restless home crowd beginning to realize their spring and summer Super Bowl aspirations were just a fever dream that preceded such a Bears-like spiral during a fittingly mediocre 8-8 season.
Three & Out 🤚
BLOCK 🙌
Penalty 🔀 SAFETY ✌️ pic.twitter.com/yhAV724uJQ— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) October 20, 2019
The next year, during a pandemic, New Orleans managed to beat Chicago twice. In overtime in November, in front of a crowd of zero at Soldier Field. And again, back in New Orleans, in the wild-card round of the NFC playoffs.
The former game included the ejection of receiver Javon Wims for throwing two punches at Saints cornerback C.J. Gardner-Johnson well after a play. The latter defeat, on the postseason stage (paid attendance: 3,000), featured another Wims meltdown, this one a dropped 40-yard touchdown pass on a gadget play named “Flash Right Atomic Bomb” that worked to perfection. Until the ball reached Wims’ hands.
Perhaps if Wims caught that score-tying pass in the first quarter, the entire game would have unfolded differently. No one will ever know. Instead, in a playoff game that featured a kids-centric broadcast on Nickelodeon, the Bears got slimed.
The team’s only touchdown came on the final play. Down 21-3. Trubisky to former Saint Jimmy Graham, who caught the football and immediately ran up the tunnel into his offseason.
Trubisky (19-for-29, 199 yards) was named that day’s “NVP” — as in “Nickelodeon Valuable Player,” with a fan vote that seemed to carry some tongue-in-cheek flair.
Three seasons later? Three Tyson Bagent turnovers in the fourth quarter of a game the Bears had within reach sealed a 24-17 defeat, one of 10 Bears losses in one of seven last-place seasons the team has had since it last beat the Saints.
This has been Bears-Saints, with enough peculiarity to warrant its own documentary series. So, yes, Chicago. Your stress is real. And it might resurface this week, even amid all the mushrooming Bears enthusiasm in town.
This season’s team, now more than a month removed from its last loss, seems to have found its energizing leader in Johnson and has shown signs it might be hitting its stride with the ability to make game-changing plays at opportune times.
Monday night’s 25-24 road win over the Washington Commanders was exhilarating. Now, the stage sure seems set for a more convincing victory this weekend over the 1-5 Saints, who are altogether ordinary across all three phases and in their first season under new coach Kellen Moore.
Even on a short week, this seems to be the very definition of a “take care of business” game for the Bears as they work to legitimize their playoff aspirations. What could possibly go wrong when the Saints come marching in?
